Paul Hurst looks at the next stage of the season
Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Hurst is looking forward to the next third of the season and what it has to throw at Town.
In the opening third of the campaign, Town won 11 games and lost just once in their 16 league games, whilst they also progressed in the FA Cup and the Checkatrade Trophy.
“Because of how things have panned out I almost think that the Peterborough signalled the end of the first third of the season and we’ve now got to prepare for that next block of games”, Paul said.
“We will still take each game at a times, as the cliché goes, but there’s no doubt that the break in my opinion has come not at the worst time. It gives us a chance to recharge and go again.
“It will take some doing to have anywhere near as successful a period, but at the same time we should be excited going into these games. The games over the festive period are usually good – good crowds, good atmosphere.
“We’ve got the FA Cup game to look forward to and the next stage of the Checkatrade Trophy, so from that point of view things are still very positive and I won’t let Tuesday night’s performance cloud the bigger picture, because we’ve got a lot of things to look forward to.”
With no game for 10 days after the Checkatrade Trophy defeat, Paul decided to push the players hard in Thursday’s training session.
“Punishments probably too stronger word, but we looked at the stats and they weren’t at the levels we want and we have targeted”, said Hurst.
“We wouldn’t have done that session if we had a game on Saturday, but at the same time I think we can get obsessed with the thought process of needing a recovery day. They’ve worked, they’ve shown they can do it and quality of the training was good.
“I’m sure they found it hard but they probably needed it. They won’t admit it to themselves but it was probably good to get that performance out of the system.
“Now they’ve got a few days where they can come away from it, get mentally refreshed as well as physically and get ready for this next stage of the season with some very difficult league games coming up.”